Next instant with a rush and a roar we plunged into the tempest, and all was blackness! It seemed to me as if that first plunge was to be the last for the gallant boat and all in her.

The bows under which we crouched, clinging for dear life to a ring on the floor, were completely submerged.

The water rushed over us and around us, nearly stunning us with its violence and deafening us with its noise.
But presently we rose suddenly, and the boat shot up till it seemed to stand on end, so that, where we sat, we could see every inch of it from stem to stern, and the dim outline of Kingstairs jetty behind.

At the same moment the ten oars dropped into their rowlocks, the coxswain, with his sou'-wester pulled down tight on his head, and a hand raised to screen his eyes from the sleet, shouted something--the boat soared wildly up the wave, and once again all was darkness for us.
How the brave boat ever got through that first half-mile of surf is a mystery to me.

Every wave seemed as though it would pitch it like a plaything across to the next.